Wild and beautiful by the beginner Smirnoff

Photo: Johan Gunseus

Karin Smirnoff, writer author of August.

"All happy families are the same, but the unhappy family is always unhappy in its own way." Tolstoy's well-known sentence could have been a motto even for Karin Smirnoff's first novel, perhaps with the word unfortunate versus dysfunctional exchange. Her book is a painfully detailed study of how our first relationships, those that will rust her for life, might be more noticeable throughout her life.

After staying elsewhere for some time, Jana, 36, returns to the small community of Smalånger, where her twin brother still lives in her childhood home. She finds a job at home to replace Maria, a woman recently found dead and as many people in the village have strong opinions and connections.

Fatalism is as relentless as in a Greek tragedy and the humor is as dark as in the most voracious fires of Torgny Lindgren.

Jana finds that it's not so easy to move "home". Meetings with people she has experienced during her education raise problems and trauma. Her brother, with whom she has always been close, lost her life after a separation and started drinking. Even more difficult when Jana initiates some kind of relationship with John, the soul of a lable artist who bothers and scares her. He also seems to know a lot about everything that Jana and her brother prefer to forget.

Karin Smirnoff works with seals at all levels: Narrative Narrative, Psychological and Stylistic. There are hardly any commas or insignia in this novel, where secrets and lies grow like tribes of a secular forest. Fatalism is as relentless as in a Greek tragedy and the humor is as dark as in the most voracious fires of Torgny Lindgren. What comes from reconciliation and understanding will be the only lightning flashes here and there, nothing that can seriously illuminate the darkness of darkness.

Karin Smirnoff has a vision, a material and a language known to be well known.

Maybe the playwright had gained a little less brutality, a little less theatricality. Perhaps the credibility (the real) would have been greater if fewer characters in the book had experienced similar experiences of abuse, cruelty and revenge.

Artistic credibility, on the other hand, is not a major mistake. Karin Smirnoff has a vision, a material and a language known to be well known. "I'm down to brother" is an unusually safe first film that does not excuse anything. It has its own logic and its own bistro, beauty bark.